How Evolution Could Sink (or Save) GM

by Meredith F. Small | June 02, 2009 05:41am ET

GM might be saved by a societal version of group selection, which refers to the possibility that genes can stay in a population because they benefit the group, regardless of what they do to individuals. Already, the Hummer H2 (shown here) is a casualty of evolution: Tuesday, GM said it plans to sell off its Hummer line.Credit: GM

As General Motors files for bankruptcy, many in the country have
been wondering what went wrong, and why everyone isn't pitching in to
save the corporate giant that has its fingers in many other companies.

It would seem that the country should act as a collative and care about this. But the reality is that capitalism is like evolution by natural selection, and natural selection can be a harsh reality.

There are many forces of evolution,
but natural selection, biologists feel, is the most important. It works
like this: All sorts of variation is produced (think SUV, compacts,
vans, and sedans) and then the environment (think free market) selects
for some and ignores others. The ignored ones are dropped out of the
gene pool (think showroom floor or metal recycling plant), and too bad
for them.

In this biological (or economic) system, only the best adapted
survive. So what if evolution is presented with something more sleek,
in cool colors, or with tinted windows — if it takes too much energy
(gas) to use, it will be selected against.

Natural selection operates on individuals, or individual automobiles
companies because not all of them are going bankrupt, and that affects
the future of the total gene pool, or automobile business. That's how
biological life, and capitalist economies, have been shaped over
generations.

But it's possible that another force of evolution could operate
here. Group selection refers to the possibility that genes can stay in
a population because they benefit the group, regardless of what they do
to individuals.

It would be like SUV's surviving into eternity because we all
chipped in to keep them rolling off the factory line even though no one
drives them anymore.

Biologists disagree about the possibility of group selection. It
just doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would people cooperate to do
something that harms them individually? And could we do this to save
jobs for people we don't even know?

In fact, evolutionary biologist Bobbi Lowe of the University of Michigan has pointed out that humans are not well designed
to operate this way. We only pay attention to close friends and close
kin because that's what was critical in our ancestral past when humans
lived in small groups. We also don't plan well for the future because our hominid history was marked by uncontrollable, unpredictable environments.

"We evolved to strive for resources and seldom, if ever, found
ourselves evolutionarily 'rewarded' for conscious restraint," Lowe has
written. Instead, she claims, humans are designed by evolution to work
well on the short-term, and forget about the more global view on
conserving anything because we just can't do it.

The Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, has recently pointed
out that helping GM isn't really an empty attempt at group selection
(although not being a biologist she didn't actually use the words
"groups selection"). Instead, Granholm says that we are all in it
together now because of the federal bailout. The infusion of our hard
earned tax money means that each of us has a vested interest in keeping
GM afloat. I other words, whether we like it or not, we now share genes
in common with those working for the car companies.

Suddenly the GM crises is no longer far away and meaningless but in our own gene pool.

Meredith F. Small is an anthropologist at Cornell University. She is
also the author of "Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture
Shape the Way We Parent" (link) and "The Culture of Our Discontent; Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness" (link). Her Human Nature column appears each Friday on LiveScience.

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Author Bio

Meredith F. Small

Meredith Small is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University, and the author of "Our Babies, Ourselves". She is a contributor to Live Science.